Automobiles and other vehicles are increasingly utilizing a variety of automated technologies that involve a wide variety of different vehicle functions and provide vehicle occupants with a diverse range of benefits. Some of those functions are more central to the function of the vehicle, as a vehicle, than other more ancillary functions. For example, certain applications may assist vehicle drivers to “parallel-park” the vehicle. Other automated applications focus on occupant safety. Safety restraint applications are one category of occupant safety applications. Airbag mechanisms or systems are a common example of a safety restraint application in a vehicle. Vehicle applications can include more discretionary functions such as navigation assistance, and environmental controls, and even purely recreational options such as DVD players, Internet access, and satellite radio. Automated devices are an integral and useful part of modern vehicles. Automatic transmission is an example of an automated application geared towards vehicle functionality. However, the automated devices embedded into vehicles need to do a better job of taking into account the context of the particular vehicle, and the person(s) or occupant(s) involved in using the particular vehicle. In particular, such devices typically fail to fully address the interactions between the occupants within the vehicle and the internal environment of the vehicle. It would be desirable for automated applications within vehicles to apply more occupant-centric and context-based “intelligence” to enhance the functionality of automated applications within the vehicle.
Additionally, safety belt restraint system (or sub-system) and air bag systems (or sub-systems) can be designed to meet separate and distinct safety criteria and performance standards based on regulatory and compliance tests and then used together as a combined system to provide occupant protection during frontal vehicle crashes. The performance, in terms of known, measurable occupant injury performance standards such as head injury criteria (HIC) and resultant chest acceleration of these combined systems may be less than the performance of the individual sub-system. Moreover, conventional restraint practices do not provide any or limited adaptation to the crash severity or occupant properties.
Today's restraint systems may even injury the occupant when deployed in an undesirable situation. For example, an air bag deployed when a crash is relatively mild, when an occupant is out of position, or where the occupant is a child, can lead to more serious injuries than if the restraint is not deployed at all. A more intelligent system may decide to deploy the air bags at a slower speed, or not deploy them at all, based on the type of accident and occupant. While the theory of safety restraint design has advanced greatly in the last decade, many of the advancements have remained in the laboratory. Particularly, there has been great progress in computer modeling of restraint systems, which is important since small modifications in the output of various restraint components often lead to significant changes in the safety of the occupants.
An aspect of some of the various embodiments of the present invention overcomes some shortcomings of conventional practices regarding sensing of occupant vehicle and crash.
An aspect of some of the various embodiments of the present invention overcomes some shortcomings of conventional practices by providing, such as but not limited thereto, a real-time process (takes place during the crash) with sensing of the conditions (occupant, vehicle, crash), development of probabilistic estimates of these conditions, and then optimization of the restraint or other safety systems.
Conventional practices are capable of sensing the presence of the occupant and/or belt use but this information is used to trigger a small set of discrete restraint modalities (e.g., air bag deployment or non-deployment, pretensioner deployment or non-deployment). Similarly, the assessment of crash severity triggers a discrete set of restraint modalities. At most, two modalities are used in current restraint systems. With regard to conventional practices, a single mode of operation of the seatbelt and airbags may be too strong for a light crash—thereby causing more injury to the occupant, than had the restraint devices not been activated. Thus, a desirable aspect of some of the various embodiments of the present invention is that it may provide a safety system that can accurately determine the optimal restraint system response to minimize injury to the occupant.
Regarding a collision, occupant properties are evolving in time, and true prediction of these properties in real time is not accurate in conventional practices. Thus, an aspect of an embodiment of the present invention may focus on real-time optimization, probabilistic estimates.
None of the uses of the prior art include calculating actual conditions in real time in a probabilistic manner—leveraging computer-intensive statistical analysis. There is a long-felt need in the art for a restraint system that can optimize a vehicle's restraints for different passengers, and make optimization adjustments in real time. The present invention satisfies this need.